The present invention relates to plasmids whose hosts can be Escherichia coli and some kinds of yeasts, namely, shuttle vectors.
In recent years, attention is being paid to production of useful substances using a recombinant DNA technique brought about by the development of molecular biology and genetic engineering. As a method of producing useful substances or as a method of incorporating a useful gene into a microorganism, insertion of a gene of interest into a plasmid and subsequent transformation of a host microorganism are ordinarily conducted. In this case, in order to supplement the low frequency of transformation of yeast and to isolate a plasmid of interest in a large amount, required is such a vector (referred particularly to as a shuttle vector) that can transform both Escherichia coli and yeast. There are already several reports on shuttle vectors which can act in both Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (a kind of yeast), such as YE.sub.p 13 [Broach, J. R., Strathern, N.J., Hicks, J. B., Gene, 8, 121, (1979)] and YR.sub.p 7 [Struhl, K., Stinchcomb, D. T., Scherer, S., Davis, R. W., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 76, 1035 (1979)].
However, a shuttle vector capable of acting in a wider range of hosts is required. The present inventors paid attention to an autonomously replicating sequence (hereinafter referred to as ARS) from Candida maltosa which is a yeast but is different from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and by using the ARS they succeeded in construction of plasmids capable of becoming stable shuttle vectors not only in Escherichia coli and Candida maltosa but also in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.